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The Global Intelligence Files

On Monday February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files, over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The e-mails date between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods.

The Pakistani government strongly condemned a cross border incident
Sept. 30 in which it claims a Frontier Corps position was deliberately
targeted by attack helicopters providing close air support for
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops operating in
Afghanistan. The Torkham border crossing in Khyber agency, perhaps the
single most important border-crossing for U.S. and allied fuel and
supplies, has been closed in protest. (if you want to add quotes,
Zardari said that Pakistan "strongly disapproves any incident of
violation of its sovereignty")

There actually appear to have been two (cross border confrontations on
Sept. 30)-- one before dawn at around 5:20 am local time and one at
around 9:30 am - with one incident resulting in the deaths of some three
paramilitary Frontier Corps soldiers and the injury of three more. ISAF
has claimed that close air support was being provided in response to and
in order to suppress and destroy a mortar position. Islamabad has
claimed that the Frontier Corps position was deliberately targeted. ISAF
troops operating near the border are regularly engaged from the
Pakistani side (mostly by militants though - we don't want to make it
should like the FC is shelling ISAF forces), and fighting effectively on
the border is not uncommon. The Frontier Corps position may indeed have
been deliberately engaged, but only after it fired on the ISAF patrol
(I'd change wording to, "...deliberately engaged, however any such
action by ISAF troops would likely have been in response to provocation
from the other side). The tactical details of the incident in question
remain unclear and in dispute, but the incident has already taken on a
life of its own. And the anger and protest that it has sparked are
reflective of a much broader dissatisfaction, not any single incident.
In this way, the facts of the matter are really beside the point.

The Pakistani military considers this the fourth incident of
cross-border incursions in less than a week. It comes at a time when
U.S. military and paramilitary operations in Pakistan, particularly in
the form of unmanned aerial vehicle strikes in the restive Federally
Administered Tribal Areas, have intensified markedly. Such efforts and
operations have always been difficult for Islamabad to tolerate, as they
not only disregard Pakistani sovereignty, but exacerbate already serious
problems in the area for Islamabad and are wildly unpopular across the
entire country.

Already on Sept. 28, the government threatened to close the border to
supplies for the war effort in Afghanistan if the attacks continued;
that threat has now been carried out. The anticipated duration of this
closure is not yet clear (past closures have lasted 1-3 days), but there
are considerable buffers built into the massive logistical effort to
sustain the war in Afghanistan and immediate operational impacts are
unlikely. (need to point out that there is still the Chaman border
crossing in the south, so it's not like the whole supply network has
been shut off) What is clear is that the Sept. 30 incident has risen
above routine operations and rhetorical Pakistani protests to something
of greater significance.

At this point, whatever the facts of the incident turn out to be (if
both sides can even agree upon the facts), the importance has shifted to
the discussions within and between Washington and Islamabad. The latter
has long been struggling to contain a mounting Taliban insurgency on its
side of the border and has now been hobbled by devastating floods that
have created a humanitarian disaster that is still, months later, still
being brought under control. Public dissatisfaction with the political
regime over its response has been mounting.

But the real power in Pakistan has long been the military. Its stability
does not appear to have been significantly eroded in recent months - if
anything, it has been strengthened as the more competent alternative to
the political regime. But the need for American assistance - including
military assistance - to facilitate humanitarian and disaster relief
efforts has this year only strengthened American leverage over the
Pakistanis.

For the military the recent intensification of American military and
paramilitary operations in Pakistan is every bit as intolerable as it is
for the political regime. And Islamabad now appears set on using this
latest incident as the casus belli for attempting to force Washington to
dial back those efforts. The question now turns to how hard and how far
Islamabad intends to push the issue, and how resistant Washington will
be in response. As Pakistan has demonstrated with the closure of the
border crossing at Torkham, Islamabad is not without its leverage over
Washington. The intelligence it chooses to share with the U.S. on al
Qaeda, Taliban and other activities on both sides of the border -
already only limited and partial and nevertheless of great significance
to the U.S. war effort -- is also extremely important.

Our attention now turns to what new accommodation and understanding
might be reached, the degree to which that new understanding entails
rhetorical shifts and public statements and the degree to which there is
meaningful alteration with operational impact.
--
Nathan Hughes
Director
Military Analysis
STRATFOR
www.stratfor.com